“In October 2010, Apple offered to license its portfolio of patents to Samsung provided the Korean company was willing to pay on the order of $30 per smartphone and $40 per tablet.

“Samsung chose to embrace and imitate Apple’s iPhone archetype,” Apple said in an Oct. 5, 2010 presentation to Samsung. “Apple would have preferred that Samsung request a license to do this in advance. Because Samsung is a strategic supplier to Apple, we are prepared to offer a royalty-bearing license for this category of device.”

In addition to this, Apple offered to drop the fees by 20% if Samsung agreed to cross-license its own patents. The Korean company has a large collection of wireless IP and standards essentials patents.

Obviously, the deal didn’t end up going through. But imagine if it had. A majority of the litigation between the two companies would have never happened — and for how much? Apple estimates that Samsung would have had to pay up around $250 million in 2010, which is chump change compared to the $2.5 billion it’s looking for now.